


the things you don't know

by jdphoenix



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: Episode: s01e21 Ragtag, Established Relationship, F/M, Unreliable Narrator
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-25
Updated: 2016-07-25
Packaged: 2018-07-26 14:21:07
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,329
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7577410
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jdphoenix/pseuds/jdphoenix
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>She doesn’t blame Fitz for being unable to look at her; she can’t even stand to be in her own skin.</p>
            </blockquote>





	the things you don't know

**Author's Note:**

> Over on tumblr, isissisi8 prompted, “Where did you get that? Who hurt you?” for biospecialist.

Seeing the Bus as it is now, crawling with HYDRA agents and Centipede soldiers, is much like the long days when Agent Hand took over command while they hunted for Coulson. Jemma hated it then too.

Much as she’d rather not, she finds herself walking close to Grant as they cross the lounge. He doesn’t wrap an arm around her shoulders or even lace their fingers the way he took to doing in Providence’s empty halls; she thinks he wants her to know she’s coming along willingly. What else she’s meant to do, however, she can’t imagine.

Is she supposed to fight tooth and nail every second? Refuse to stretch her legs for the first time in hours solely for the victory of forcing him to carry her? There is some small part of her that argues that’s what May would do, but Jemma isn’t May. She hasn’t the training or experience to fight Grant physically, so instead she’ll save her energy for when it counts - and when refusal isn’t likely to see her carried over his shoulder like a bag of rice.

She thinks at first they’re headed downstairs - no doubt Garrett is eager to see her working on the GH-325 for his super soldiers - but instead Grant veers to the right, and her heart stutters. Is he going to lock her in the Cage?

She thought, days ago now, that she’d rather they throw her in a cell than keep her in her bunk or the relatively comfortable quarters she enjoyed in Cuba. At least then they wouldn’t be able to pretend it’s a kindness to keep her locked up.

Now, however, she finds her footsteps slowing. She has the terrible thought that if she enters the Cage now, she’ll never again see the outside of it.

“Since you don’t wanna talk to me,” Grant says, a hint of annoyance in his tone when he grabs a tablet - one of May’s - from the guard standing at the door, “I figured you might be more chatty with someone else.”

Rather than open the door to lock her in, he holds out the tablet. On its display is what she assumes to be a live image of the interior of the Cage. It’s not empty.

“Fitz!” she gasps, half in horror, half in relief. She hasn’t seen any of the team since Skye escaped three - four? - days ago. (After days of globe-hopping and imprisonment, she’s not certain how long it’s been.) Though Fitz is here and in no small amount of danger as a result, knowing he’s alive is a great relief.

“Yeah,” Grant says with a smile. “Thought you’d like that.”

All her joy fades away, replaced by the chill that seems to accompany her everywhere since the Uprising. Grant says it like he’s brought Fitz as a present. And perhaps he has. Perhaps he went out and kidnapped her best friend in hopes she would be charmed by the gesture, as though he’s a box of take-out from her favorite restaurant.

A week ago she would have said that was impossible, Grant would never. Now she realizes she doesn’t know him at all. For all she knows, kidnapping comes standard in the Grant Ward Guide to Romance.

“He hasn’t been very talkative either,” Grant says, blindly returning the tablet to the guard while keeping his eyes fixed on her, “but I think you’ll get him to open up.”

She stiffens; there’s no telling what he means by that. “I won’t be used against him,” she says, though she has no way of stopping him. “I’m not going to help you force him to work for Centipede or HYDRA or anyone.”

He cups her cheek in his hand. “I’m not asking you to. I’m just trying to give you a few minutes with him; I know you’ve missed him.”

The question of whether she should consider this a goodbye sits too heavily on her tongue to be voiced.

“If you’d rather not, I understand. It’s been a rough few days, neither of you are at your best. But if you wanted to…”

“Yes,” she says, hating him for making her admit she wants anything he’s offering. But she can’t say no to Fitz. She _needs_ to see him. Not for any reason - though she has some hope they might be able to concoct an escape plan between them without Grant catching on - but simply because it’s _Fitz_ and a picture on a screen is no substitute for the real thing.

The pressure against her cheek increases briefly - it would have been sweet last week - before Grant steps away to open the door.

Fitz is still as he was on the security feed: head bowed, arms crossed, leaning against the interrogation table. Every line of him is tense and that doesn’t change when he looks up. Her heart stops. He’s _hurt_. His lip is split and an impressive bloom is blossoming over half his face. It must hurt when a muscle in that cheek jumps, but he doesn’t show it. His eyes blaze and there’s a shake in his shoulders as Grant steps closer behind her.

“Five minutes,” Grant says softly and gives her a light shove.

She barely hears the clunk of the door closing her in, she’s too caught up in the sight of Fitz, real and alive and in front of her. “Oh, _Fitz_ ,” she says again and starts towards him. She should have thought to bring her medical kit, perhaps Grant will let her-

He steps back. He slides along the edge of the table and, once free of it at his back, steps pointedly away from her.

“Fitz? What are you doing?” She tries to smile, hoping this is all the result of some confusion on his part. When he only goes on staring - in a most unsettling way; he has never looked on her with that expression before - she says, “Why don’t you sit? Let me look at those injuries?”

He makes an ugly noise, and that coldness returns. She fights it down. It’s been days since she last saw the others, any number of things could have happened to cause Fitz to act this way towards her. He’s always been terribly sensitive, after all, and it’s to be expected that the pain he  _must_ be suffering would cause him to act churlishly.

Of course, it could also be the origin of the blow.

“Where did you get that?” she asks, trying to step closer again. “Who hurt you?” She needs to know if it was-

She needs to know who it was, and that’s all there is to it.

“Stay away from me!” he snaps, moving to put the table between them. “I don’t need your help.” She thinks - but she must be wrong - that there might be some emphasis on that ‘your.’ It's unconscionably cold in the Cage.

She wraps her arms around herself. “Please. Just tell me what’s happened. Talk to me, Fitz.” That’s why she’s here, isn’t it? To talk to him? She still doesn’t know why - if it’s some design of Garrett’s or some gift of Grant’s or, worse, one of the inverse - but she’s desperate for it all the same.

He makes that ugly sound again and this time she recognizes it as a dismissal. “Why don’t you ask your _boyfriend_.” There is most assuredly an emphasis there, this one fit to strike her as hard as any slap.

She stumbles away until her legs hit the cot on the wall and she sinks onto it. “How- how long have you known?” She fears the question comes out rather hollow, but she can’t quite tell over the roaring in her ears.

They kept it a secret - at Grant’s insistence, and now she has to wonder if there was some reason for that she never saw - and she was only too happy to go along. For Fitz’s sake, she told herself. He never could like any of her boyfriends, even men he liked to start turned loutish in his mind the moment she took interest, and she couldn’t bear to see his relationship with Ward take a similar turn.

That fear seems silly now.

“Since we found Skye’s message in Providence.” Jemma doesn’t know anything about a message, but Fitz goes on as though she should. “Coulson told us about-” he gestures distastefully, turning to one side as though he can’t bear to even look on her while he thinks of it- “about the two of you. And then Skye confirmed it after we got her back.”

Jemma shakes her head, still trying to catch up. “How did _she_ know?” Coulson she can make sense of - he’s an elite spy and they were engaging in a relationship on his plane, they really should have seen that coming - but Skye has little training and all of it coming from Grant himself.

“She heard the two of you talking about it,” Fitz says. It’s the same biting tone he used before, but she’s too numb to feel the same sting. “She said you were worried you hadn’t really beaten the lie detector, and Ward told you he ‘ _took care_ ’ of Koenig. And you were so _happy_.”

She shakes her head, not to deny it - because she _was_ relieved, but only because she thought Grant had _spoken_ to Koenig, explained their situation and that he didn’t think admitting to a secret in the midst of such turbulent times would be prudent. She didn’t know then that he’d killed the poor man.

Skye told her he had, threw it in her face when Jemma accused _her_ of being HYDRA because she’d lied about the hard drive. She didn’t know she was only giving HYDRA what they wanted by exposing Skye. She didn’t know the man she’d fallen in love with and welcomed into her bed was a traitor.

She doesn’t blame Fitz for being unable to look at her; she can’t even stand to be in her own skin.

“I’m sorry,” she says softly. “I was-” She reaches for some explanation or excuse for her actions. She was blinded by her feelings? Caught up in the excitement of an ill-conceived love affair? Too infatuated with the man to see him for what he truly was, even when he practically laid it all out for her? Those aren’t excuses at all, and she’s ashamed of every one of them. “I didn’t think it would turn out like this,” she says finally, lifting a hand to her aching chest. She didn’t know better than any of them that the world was going to spin out of control and Grant would prove himself the enemy, but she should have.

Fitz is looking at her again. She can identify that expression now; it’s disgust. “You think that makes it okay? That you can say you’re sorry and everything you did is just magically better?”

“Fitz-” she pleads.

He rounds the table, fury written plain on his face. “You _lied_ to me!” he thunders. “ _Every day_.” She’s never seen him this angry, not in ten long years together. Every word, every violent gesture, makes her heart seize in her chest. “And for what? For _him_? For _th-_?”

The door swings open and in a heartbeat Grant’s there between them, so big and broad she imagines he could block out the sun. He certainly puts to shame the looming Fitz was doing a moment ago. “Back. Away.”

Fitz’s jaw is tight and he dares a glance at the door - and the armed guard standing in it - before doing as he’s told.

Grant turns his back on Fitz without a moment’s hesitation. All his cold fury is gone, replaced by concern, and for the first time in days Jemma’s heart is too weak to harden in the face of it.

He kneels down in front of her and rests one hand on her knee. Only then does she realize the position she’s in: back pressed flush with the wall - she fears she’ll have bruises in the shape of hexagons tomorrow - and legs curled up on the thin mattress to give her as much distance from Fitz as possible.

She’s never been frightened of him before. She doesn’t know what to do with that.

“Are you okay?” Grant asks, thumbing her cheek. She’s crying as well. She didn’t know. “Did he hurt you?”

Fitz makes that hateful noise, and something inside her snaps. She shakes her head, unable to find her voice.

Grant leans closer to softly ask, “You’ve still got two minutes. Do you wanna stay?”

She shakes her head again and this time allows herself to lean towards him. He catches her shoulders, pulling her to him as he stands.

They make it two steps before she remembers the one question she can’t leave without having answered. Grant stops when she stops and allows her to turn to Fitz again.

Hate, pure and vicious, burns in his eyes, so she focuses on the bruising around the right one instead. “Who hit you?” she asks.

Fitz looks to Grant, but she can see before he speaks that he only _wishes_ he could say his name. “I dunno, one of the Centipede soldiers.”

Jemma nods to herself and, question answered, leans into Grant, only to have him pull away the moment they’re out of the Cage. Bereft, she watches him march back into the Cage, right up to Fitz until there’s barely space to breathe between them. Whatever he says is too soft for Jemma to hear and it’s not enough to erase Fitz’s defiant expression, but it does cause him to pale.

Grant returns and the door closes. He makes to take her down the hall - presumably back to her bunk - and, remembering the earlier march across the lounge, this time she presses up against his side. He doesn’t hesitate at all before slinging an arm around her shoulders. She sinks gratefully into him, allowing him to comfort her.

 


End file.
